Bare Skin and Faded Grey Lines
by Dancing Nebulas
Summary: Rose Tyler grows up in a world where each person receives a part soulmate mark on their sixteenth birthday. On the eve of hers Rose has no reason to think she would be any different; that is, until she awakens from a dream about a mysterious man with a face that changes shape but whose eyes always have the same haunted gaze, to find that something has gone wrong with her mark.


She grows up hearing the stories about soulmates from her mother. She hears about how her mark will fill in when she turns sixteen, just like it's supposed to. She hears about how she will go through a phase of frantic searching before she settles down a little, and realizes that she will probably find her someone someday.

After all there are five billion people on the Earth, almost all of whom have marks, so it will just take time for the two of them to meet, because most people meet their soulmate after all, it just takes time and patience, her mummy lectures.

Her mummy also tells Rose her own story about finding her soulmate.

Mummy tells her about how lucky she had been because it had been just a few years after her mark filled in that she had met the most extraordinary man. The one who was always coming up with daft little scheme. This man was the one she had been sure was her other half, she tells her daughter, she had been sure of it. The marks on their wrists had been similar enough after all, probably identical even, although it was hard to tell, because it was before all the paying to have your mark scanned nonsense.

"But mummy how ca' ya know?" she asks every time her mother holds her and tells her these stories. While she also stares at the edges of the once bold black mark that's now coloured a faded grey.

It's something that she can't explain her mummy tells her. All her mummy could say is she would know when she meets the right man or woman, as more then a few people would point out, because she would get this funny feeling like something has fallen into place in her heart. It isn't a sensation where words can be used to describe it. There's only the feeling and only someone who had found his or her soulmate can understand.

She nodded accepting that answer, they had told her as much in school, that they would know, but they wouldn't know until they know.

So she continued to grow waiting patiently, and as the years pass and the little girl who sat on her mummy's lap and got told stories grows into a preteen, and then a teenager of thirteen she would always wondered what her soulmate would be like. She wonders if they will be funny, smart, enthusiastic, smiling, and cheeky or grumpy, dark on the surface, but with a loving core underneath it all? It was fun to imagine what they would be like, fun to picture meeting them in at a pub, at the chippy, or,as the voice in her mind whispers, reminding her, in a shop where she works.

She shakes her head and pulls herself away from her thoughts as she watches Mickey jump from the swings again, laughing, and she laughs too because what else can she do but indulge in the joy of her best friend? She knows his mark will fill in soon, years ahead of hers because Mickey is two years older then her, and the thick black borders will appear on his wrist with the more delicate patterns filling in the space between them.

She looks down at her own bare wrist, one of the few things that marks her age now as she continues to grow older, the one that won't fill in for a few years yet. She reminds herself to ask him what it's like to go through the marking.

She never does remember to ask him, and for a few more years it stays tucked at the back of her mind as she tries to enjoy her last carefree years with her friends. She knows she'll lose Shareen, Mickey, and everyone else to the drama that with filling in marks, and the first frantic hunts for soulmates soon after.

Slowly the clock ticks away marking the passage of time and those the last few years pass in what feels like both the blink of an eye, and gruellingly slow pace. Suddenly she finds herself fifteen going on sixteen and she receives her package in the mail. The one that contains the cotton pad, the bandages, and the gauze that every person gets from the government before their sixteenth birthday. Her mother is smiling at her when she hands the package over to Rose the day it arrives at their flat on the Powell estate.

"Oh darlin' soon everything's going to change, you're growin' up so fast," her mum quavers into her hair, as Jackie pulls her into a hug after she gets home that day. She squeezes her mum back just as tightly because she's starting to get what it's like to walk around everyday with the faded grey mark on her wrist. The looks of pity that strangers give her when she goes out because they think her mark hasn't filled in, although most people are still polite enough to ignore her, or if they notice to not say anything.

Soon enough though no one's going to stare at her anymore because her wrist will be marked, she just has to wait two more weeks.

On the eve of her sixteenth birthday her mum helps her spread the thick gauze pad out on her bed down near where her wrist would rest, as she sleeps through the bleeding and the pain. Her skin splitting open and healing a bold black, marking the beginning of her transition to adulthood.

"There ya go love, snug enough? Not gonna be leaking over the mattress?" Jackie asks as she applies the last piece of the tape holding the bandage in place.

"Do you want anything before you go to sleep? A nice cuppa?" her mum continues testing the bandage again.

Rose shakes her head, smiling up at her mum before reaching out to hug pull her into another hug.

"Thanks mum," she whispers hoarsely into her mother's shoulder.

"I'm gonna go and get the paracetamol for you. I know that when I woke up the mornin' after the bleedin' my wrist was achin' for days." her mum clucks. Jackie moves slowly from her room to the bathroom across the hallway of their small flat.

Rose glances around her childhood bedroom her eyes taking in the soothing tone of her favourite colour. She looks down at the crisp whiteness of the bandage wrapped firmly but lovingly around her wrist before her eyes dart over to the pad sitting hidden under her covers on the other side of the bed waiting to catch the crimson of her precious life giving blood.

Her mind drifts and ideally she can't help but wonder what her mark will look like. She knows it'll probably look like everyone else's, her family just didn't have any special patterns running through it, just the generic ones the same one that most of England wears on their wrists. The one that would appear will probably look similar to Mickey's and Shareen's, more closely resembling the faded grey of the one on her mum's wrist. The swirling vines or curling waves would appear bold and visible but it would be the small differences in the pattern that would make her mark unique.

The creaking of the floor boards alerts her to her mum coming back to her and as she places a pair of pills down on her nightstand next to her lamp, a tall glass of water next to that she catches a look on her mum's face that breaks her heart. Her is mum smiling at her, a wide grin that she recognizes, the one that she used to get when she would tell her the story about soulmates, the one about her father. It's a grin that her mum thought hid the pain in her eyes, but it's one that she had learned to see through as she grew.

"I love you mum," she blurts out before reaching up to pull her mum into another hug. She can feel her mother pulling her against her a little more tightly then she normally would have.

"Love you too sweetheart," her mum sighs before pulling away from her, arms going up to grab her shoulders.

"Now listen, if somethin' happens, and the mark doesn't come in right then there's no shame in it alright love? These things happen, and there's nothing wrong with you, it's not your fault," her mum informs her.

"What?" she blurts out.

She tries to keep the confusion and horror entering her voice as she continues, "I know mum but it won't happen to me alright?"

She shakes her head firmly trying to force her voice to sound even although it quivers even to her own ears. She can feel it in the way her heart pounds when she looks down at the bandage; something is whispering in her ear that it isn't needed, but that can't be right she knows her mum's worried about nothing. She has to be because she couldn't do that to her mum, bring that shame to her.

"I know love, I just wanted to give you that talk. It's what they said to do in the pamphlet that came with the kit," her mum assures her as they fall into a momentary silence.

"G'night love," Jackie finally whispers before pressing another kiss to her forehead.

She knows her mum is saying goodbye in a way, just like she is, because when she wakes up in the morning everything will change. She'll suddenly be thrust into the world of dating, and of finding partners, and looking for soulmates, and from what she's heard about from Shareen that is a full time job all by itself, never mind trying to keep up with school and getting ready for her A levels.

She looks over at the white door that her mother closes on her way out. One more time at the four walls of the only place she's ever called home, and for one last time she wonders who her soulmate is.

Well she'll probably find out soon enough, she might even get a clue tonight; she'd heard rumours that some people got a clue about their soulmates in their dreams, maybe she would be that lucky. With a deep breath she reaches out and turns off her lamp, pulling her blankets over her as she puts her wrist on the pad and closing her eyes, willing herself to fall asleep.

Quickly she finds herself drifting off into darkness, before quickly being surrounded by a swirling gold light that she instinctively knows is space and of time folding together to form something she will never understand yet already does. She dreams of stars, galaxies, and nebulas, of pictures that she's only seen in her science book, and in museums. She dreams of a changing hand grabbing hers, and voices that are sometimes high and sometimes low, but always calling her name and telling her to run.

Run they do, they run through all of space, and all of time, seeing sights she never thought were possible, beauty that is awe inspiring, and horrors so chilling she could never speak them aloud. Finally she dares to looks over to the person holding her hand and catches a glimpse of a man, and sometimes a woman, who is running beside her. The person is sometimes old and sometimes young, they are sometimes blonde and sometimes brown, but what stands out most to her is the eyes that stare, no bore, into her own. They change as she dreams, shifting from blue, to grey, to brown, and finally green before going back again, but they are always looking at her.

They're all filled with the same expression of ancient pain and sorrow, caused by a loss she somehow knows she could never hope to understand. There's also another look in that person's eyes however, and it's this one that takes her breath away, makes her stand still, and stare at them with awe in the knowledge that it's directed at her. Those haunted eyes always look at her as if she was everything in this persons world, as if she's their happiness, their strength, and their resolve, and like hell would reign down on anything that tried to separate them.

She gasps at the intensity of them, at the words are both spoken and unspoken she sees reflecting within them. She gasps when she sees the pain flash through them again, this time so fundamentally different from the one she sees before, these eyes look at her as if they've lost everything, where she once knew they shined now all she could see is an unmatched dullness.

Suddenly she feels the slap of cold air on her face, and an icy wet trickle falling from her eyes as she feels her heart breaking and before she can know what the man opposite her is going to say she gasps awake tears sliding down her cheeks as the dream fades with the rising sun. The bubbling annoyance she feels building within her warring with the sickness and heartbreak that haunts her mind and makes her feel nauseous.

It's only the sharp lack of a sensation that should be wracking her body that pulls her out of the echoes of heartbreak and back into reality. It's a startlingly simple realization, but one she knows will follow her for the rest of her life: her wrist doesn't hurt.

She wrenches her wet fingers away from her cheek and stares with rolling nausea at the pristine cotton of the bandage that should be soaked crimson but somehow isn't. With a wet, clammy, and trembling hand, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and a pounding heart she claws at the neat line of tape done with such care by her mother the night before. She unravels the once clinically pristine cotton with frantic fingers, leaving pock marks and tattered pieces of fabric in the place of smooth cotton. The soft fabric is quickly hefted across the room with desperate force as she rips the pad that should be crimson but isn't away from her skin like a curse. She coughs heaving once as she reveals the creamy white of her unmarked skin. She feels her stomach roll once before scrambling out of bed and to her feet, running across the room and retching into the waste basket on the other side of the room.

She is that one in a fifty-thousand, one of the ones who is cursed to walk through life unmarked. Rose begins to laugh hysterically as she collapses beside the waste paper basket. She wants to scream and to shout about the unfairness of it all, her mothers mark is already grey before its time, and now she has a daughter with none at all, one of the marks of shame in a small world already full of them. She wants to run out and tell her mum, to rant and rave, ask her why she of all people have been cursed in such a way.

She does none of those things however as she forces herself to her feet before her knees give away and make her sit on her bed numb as something inside her can't ever tell anyone because she can't bring that kind of shame to her mum. She couldn't bear the looks of sympathy she would get on the streets but she won't give in because if there's one thing Rose Tyler isn't it's weak. Instead she does none of those things, quickly formulating a plan she gets, walking over to her jewelry box and pulls out the watch she had inherited from her dad. It's a watch that doesn't work but was large enough to cover the bare expanse of skin.

Rose quickly snaps the watch over her wrist, hiding the shamefully bare skin from the rest of the world. She forces her amazing dream of running through space and time with the extraordinary person with a changing body but the same look of despair in them from her mind as she silently mourns what was never meant too be but will lie about to everyone instead. Plastering a smile on her lips as she gets ready to greet the day, and preparing herself to lie to everyone she loves about the most important thing to happen in her life.


End file.
